Zibo Zhenke (紫柏真可, 1543-1604) is regarded as one of the three eminent monks during the Wanli (萬曆) era in the Ming Dynasty. Zibo promoted the importance of doctrine in the Chan community by claiming that the relationship between Chan and doctrine is inseparable like essence and function, like “water and waves.” As one can only “drink water from waves,” one can only attain Chan enlightenment through the doctrine. The main questions addressed in this paper are what hermeneutic strategy Zibo adopted to legitimize his perspective on “Chan and doctrine” which is different from “a separate transmission apart from the doctrine” (教外別傳), the mainstream view of the Chan community since the 9th century, and how modern scholars explain why Zibo emphasized doctrine.
I will categorize these responses into two approaches; one being the contextualization approach, and the other being the cultural essentialism approach. The former approach aims to contextualize the object to be explained and attribute it to the influence of the external environment. This way, however, also leads to the problem of constructionism against essentialism. Zibo and D. T. Suzuki adopted the same form of cultural essentialism approach, which appeals to an ineffable and spiritual experience regarded as the essence, such as “enlightenment,” “mind” or “Chan/Zen itself.”
In this regard, despite Robert H. Sharf’s view that “the Rhetoric of Religious Experience” is largely a “modern” product, there are still vestiges of the “premodern” behind the similarities of Zibo’s and Suzuki’s approaches, such as the epistemological position that defines enlightenment as an experience that is not accessible to the intellect. Finally, this paper attempts to point out that this essentialist approach, while leading to perennialist “religious pluralism”, also shows the will to identity of religious tradition, which is in accordance with the ontological basis of Zibo’s thought, that is, the doctrine of buddha nature (佛性).
Keywords:
Zibo Zhenke, the Relationship between Chan and Doctrine, Contextualization, Cultural Essentialism, the Rhetoric of Religious Experience